


Like Julia Roberts in 'My Best Friend's Wedding'

by Daisiestdaisy (Doyle)



Category: Silicon Valley (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-03
Updated: 2016-07-03
Packaged: 2018-07-19 22:44:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7380382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Doyle/pseuds/Daisiestdaisy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Monica and Erlich have a terrible time at Richard's wedding.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like Julia Roberts in 'My Best Friend's Wedding'

**Author's Note:**

> joycecarolnotes prompted Erlich/Monica, "miserable at a wedding" AU, and then I completely failed to make it shippy.

Thank God, as always, for the only person she could ever really count on: three-hours-ago Monica, who’d taken the scenic route back from the ladies’ room and stashed half a pack of Marlboros in a bonsai pot in one of the zen gardens.

Fuck, though, another guest had had the same idea. A heavyset bearded guy was sprawled over one of the low benches, collar popped, bow tie loose around his neck. His half-closed eyes were red-rimmed. Monica hesitated at the torii gate – the absolute last thing she wanted right now was anyone else’s drama – but then he wheezed out a smoky cough, and she realized he hadn’t been crying. Some idiot who’d snuck away from the wedding to get high, that she could live with. She crossed the threshold into the garden and retrieved her cigarettes, lighting up as she dropped onto the other, empty bench.

“Those things’ll kill you,” her stoner companion observed, which was pretty special coming from someone who she strongly suspected had just been trying to smoke out of the blender that was discarded by his feet. She ignored him.

“Erlich Bachman,” he said.

Then, after a second’s expectant pause, “you’ve probably heard of me.”

She took a long drag of her cigarette.

“Late of Aviato; founder of Palo Alto’s premier start-up incubator; most recently, the architect of this event.”

Monica looked up at the darkening sky and wondered when Laurie was going to let them all leave.

“Not in the literal sense of planning the wedding, although frankly I would have made a less piss-poor job than whoever let live swans anywhere near Richard, but some would argue it was down to me that the happy couple met.”

Nine? Ten? The more the guests drank, the less they’d be able to network, and Laurie would call it a night. Unless, shit, had she read somewhere, or had Peter maybe told her once, that Gavin didn’t drink?

“One would imagine this would net me an invitation to lead a toast, if not a spot as a groomsman, but fame and money and getting your dick sucked on the regular by a powerful billionaire changes people. Excuse my language. I’m quite high. How dare you wear white to a wedding, by the way. You must know how spectacular you look. It’s declasse.”

“Déclassé,” she corrected him, before she could help herself. Dammit. “And... thank you? And, that only applies if there’s a bride. Half the women here are in white.”

He grunted. “Acceptable. I’ll let it slide.”

“ _Thank_ you.”

He nodded, regally, the sarcasm entirely missed.

Monica exhaled, and watched the stream of smoke rise lazily into the air. “Wait,” she said, piecing together the name and that ramble about the wedding, “I think I _have_ heard of you. Nucleus came out of your incubator, right?”

Bachman pulled himself upright, or as close as a big man on a small bench could get. “That’s right. Richard was one of my incubees. Ten percent of Pied Piper, as it was originally, terribly called, in exchange for a warm bed, a workspace, and twenty-four seven access to my business acumen. My, ha, Bachumen, if you will.”

“I always thought your name was Blachman.”

“Goddammit... here.” He fished inside his jacket pocket and thumbed a business card from a platinum holder. Reluctantly, she stood and took it from him, and since she figured she should take the chance to claim this break counted as networking, she handed him her own from her inconveniently tiny purse.

“Monica Hall,” he read. “Raviga. I saw you earlier with Laurie Bream. She here stag?”

“She’s here with me,” Monica said, and he looked very interested until she said, “and four other people from our office. This is a work event for us.”

“Sounds fun.”

It was a mandatory office party combined with a wedding of one of the worst people she knew to someone she didn’t know at all, and Evan – _Evan_. Who she’d thought hated her, who was always tattling on her to Laurie – had decided this was the night to tell her out of nowhere that he was in love with her.

“Fun,” she echoed, sitting back down. “Sure.”

Bachman prodded the blender away with his foot. “Shit,” he said. “I should get that back to the gift table.”

She stubbed out the cigarette on the end of the bench. “I should get back to my group.”

Neither of them moved.

She couldn’t not ask. She’d always wanted to know, and who knew if she’d ever run into this man again. “How much did you make from the Pied Piper deal, anyway?”

He gave her a look that was shrewder than he would have expected. “Raviga,” he said. “Peter Gregory’s outfit. Didn’t Richard give you people first eyes on Pied Piper?”

“We get pitched a lot of apps,” she said. And that was true, and that was what she’d been telling herself for a year, as Hooli rolled out Nucleus and their market value soared.

“I made fifty k,” Erlich said. “Hardly chump change.”

“So Gavin got it for half a million.” Nothing, in the grand scheme of Hooli’s annual turnover, or Gavin’s personal wealth. Somewhere in her emails she’d advised Peter to go to ten million. He’d never mentioned it afterward, and she’d never told anyone else about the one that got away, how she’d read through Richard Hendricks’s Github with mounting excitement at the possibilities of the algorithm, only to get him on the phone and hear he’d signed with Hooli twenty minutes earlier.

“Guess Richie doesn’t need the money anyway, now,” Erlich said. Then, almost contemplatively, almost to himself: “Still. You have to wonder how high it could have flown.”


End file.
